NEW HAVEN, Conn. — The man who created the “Sandy Hook Principles” says safe streets should get just as much attention in America as safe airplanes.

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, in a speech Monday at Yale University, called on lawmakers and citizens to put economic pressure on gun and ammunition manufacturers, distributors and retailers in order to stem the tide of gun violence that “rips out the heart and soul of what a city is all about.”

He also suggested the formation of a national commission on domestic terrorism, crime and violence.

“In essence, we have a Sandy Hook every day in the United States of America,” Nutter said, noting the “slow and steady drumbeat of murder and homicide” in U.S. cities.

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Nutter, in his second term as mayor, said Philadelphia had 74 homicides in the first quarter of this year, a 30 percent reduction from the first quarter a year ago. Among the measures his city has taken are boosting the number of surveillance cameras, using police and courts data to track potentially violent individuals and setting higher bail amounts and longer jail sentences to those caught carrying unlicensed handguns.

Yet grim statistics remain. Nutter said gun violence is decimating the African American community, while 30 percent of Philadelphia’s city budget goes toward maintaining public safety.

“The guns are already there. They’re on the ground,” Nutter said. “In many cities in America, you can actually rent guns.”

In January, a month after the massacre that killed 20 students and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Nutter presented his idea for the “Sandy Hook Principles.” Modeled after similar efforts to fight South African apartheid a generation earlier, these principles demand that gun and ammunition-related companies support more extensive background checks, develop additional gun safety measures, reevaluate their policies about design and sale of military-style assault weapons and support restrictions on sales or possession of guns by children, people with mental illness and criminals.

Nutter lamented the inability of Congress to pass reasonable gun safety measures since the Newtown shootings. Similarly, he questioned why the country has been able to dramatically reshape airline safety and establish a Homeland Security infrastructure, yet can’t make background checks mandatory for gun sales.

“It’s about systems. It’s about investment. It’s about paying attention,” he said. “On the issue of guns we are perfectly paralyzed.”

For that matter, he explained, the Pennsylvania fish and game code has more regulations on ammunition and gun types allowed in hunting, than the state legislature has on appropriate use of guns on city streets.

“Hell, I’ll take some of those (fish and game) provisions for the city of Philly,” Nutter said.

“There are a lot of parallels to New Haven,” Elicker said, regarding the twin challenges of reducing gun violence while enhancing education in a tough economy. “We don’t have, as a municipality, a lot of tools to address gun trafficking. Using market forces (such as the Sandy Hook Principles) is a tool we should explore.”